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Some time ago i noticed that when I opened a PDF file, Adobe Reader X stopped responding for sometime. I noticed it happens on Windows 2003, Windows 7 and Windows 2008. after some investigation I found a solution in disabling Adobe’s “new” Protected Mode feature.

I’m experiencing the same problem and disabling protected mode seems to be a feasible work-around at first. I didn’t know what this mode is being used for so I did a short research: With protected mode enabled PDFs will be opened in a sandbox. Considering the variety of security holes in Adobe’s software I’d thus recommend keeping the protected mode activated and trying to find a different solution:
– Reinstall Adobe Reader
– Use a different PDF viewer

I don’t know about sandboxing in other PDF viewers but one might use an additional sandbox for maximum security.

I just assume this was a minor bug or performance issue on my PC. This solves my problem of perma-stuck for about 10 seconds every time when i tried opening a simple PDF documents. This webpage should be stickied everywhere else on the web.

wow,, this really helps. I was getting frustrated every time i open pdf and have to wait 10 or 15 sec. I knew it was not my pc since I have solid state hard-drive… Sounds like a patch for a bigger problem… I have to say Adobe needs to fix the security hold rather than taking a short cut like this. sounds like a manager’s decision to do this way…

Not only does Adobe Reader freeze, but when I try to open it to uncheck Protected Mode, I either get a huge display that doesn’t even fit my 24″ monitor screen, or I get a tiny display that shows checked boxes but absolutely no text. Either way, I can’t do anything. I’ve tried deleting Reader, rebooting and reloading, but nothing helps. Has anyone seen this?

I have Adobe Reader XI v11.0.5 and the ‘Enable Protected Mode at startup’ option is located in Edit->Preferences->Security(Enhanced) instead of Edit->Preferences->General
Unchecking it resolved the issue for me as well. Thanks!

There is another reason why Acrobat can freeze for a moment every time you open a file. If you opened a PDF document from a remote network drive, and that drive later becomes unavailable, Acrobat will freeze at every start-up for as long as the remote PDF remains in the list of recently open documents.

You can just open 5 different locally stored PDF files to fix this. This will propagate the missing remote file out of the recent document list, and Acrobat will no longer try to reach the disconnected drive.

If these steps don’t work try navigating to the Adobe Reader folder (ex: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader) and run the eula.exe and Accept the agreement. After 4 years of this problem this finally worked.

I have Adobe Reader XI v11.0.5 and the ‘Enable Protected Mode at startup’ option is located in Edit->Preferences->Security(Enhanced) instead of Edit->Preferences->General
Unchecking it resolved the issue for me as well. Thanks!

After updating to XI I could not open a PDF without first opening the program, as an administrator, then opening the file. Was never going to be a good pipeline. The fix completely worked. The option is now under Security (Enhanced) instead of General as JR pointed out.

I had an issue opening PDFs from search results using IE11 Windows 7 Pro. IE used to crash. I fixed it by unchecking the “Display PDF in browser” option in Edit -> Preferences -> Internet (I use Acrobat Profession). I am sure this option is available in all Adobe readers but may be located in a different place.